


Deserts of Hope

by Elphaba_descending



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Drama, M/M, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-03-21 19:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elphaba_descending/pseuds/Elphaba_descending
Summary: The Order locks him up and so, Harry flees.





	1. Half a Chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Slayer_of_Destiny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slayer_of_Destiny/gifts), [blurredink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurredink/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Second Chances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/385354) by [Slayer_of_Destiny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slayer_of_Destiny/pseuds/Slayer_of_Destiny). 



> **Trigger Warnings:** Mentions of Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Syndrome), Pedophilia, Suicidal Thoughts, Self Harm, Abortion. Explicit depictions of PTSD.

"I'm so sorry Harry, I could only grab your wand."

Harry gives Hermione a tight nod. He tries not to think about his father's invisibility cloak, his firebolt from Sirius, or his homemade photo album from Hagrid.

It's been nearly two months, and his wand is warm and welcoming in his hand. Unexpectedly filled with irrepressible joy he gives it a wide wave as he did the very day he bought it, but only a few pitiful sparks shimmer in the air.

They both stare at the wand in horror. He knew that his magic was getting weaker but this..."Looks like I'm leaving at just the right time." He says quietly to Hermione.

She hands him a dainty bag filled with British pounds as well as a dark brown wig with straight bangs and butterfly clips in it. It's definitely a girl's wig. He hugs her fiercely. "Have I ever told you how brilliant you are?" She grips him back just as tightly. They do not say goodbye. It feels too final.

Hermione lowers him gently out the window. His feet have barely touched the ground when he hears-

"Hello Professor Lupin!" loudly and brightly.

Harry flattens himself along the wall. Grimmauld Place's ancient paint flakes off onto his skin and hair. He stifles a sneeze -don't look down, don't look down-

"Hermione? I keep telling you to call me Remus. Where's Harry?"

-don't look down, _please_ don't look down

"He's in the bathroom Pro- Remus."

"Okay, thank you, maybe I can catch him by surprise."

Harry can’t see, naturally, but it is obvious that something in Hermione's face must give her away when Lupin says "You know it's for his own good right?"

"Of course," Hermione says.

"Run!" Hermione whispers down to him six rapid heartbeats later.

He does not need to be told twice. After all he's been running his whole life.

\--HP--

The gentle rumble of the bus is making him nauseous. He does not want to think about where he is going, he does not want to think about those he left behind.

"Excuse me Miss?" A stranger woman takes the seat next to him. She has kind eyes, but Lupin had kind eyes too.

"Yes" he says in his squeakiest voice. He pulls his arms tightly around himself.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, I just, here" She hands him a frilly handkerchief. He touches his face, his fingers come away wet. He hadn't realized he was crying.

"Thank you" he manages to say through his embarrassment.

Then he remembers he's pretending to be a girl. Girls are allowed to cry. Suddenly he can't hold himself back. Quiet sobs shake his too thin frame. He hadn't cried this hard when his godfather Sirius had died, he hadn't cried this hard when Cedric had died in his arms. The last time he had cried this hard he was a little boy and had finally grasped that his parents were never coming to save him. They were dead. Dead meant left alone forever.

When he finally glances up he is surprised to see the woman is still there. "I don't know anything about your story, but you are not alone." She grips his hand tightly and gets up.

He gapes after her. He hopes he hadn't let something slip while he was ...acting. He hopes no one obliviates the uncommonly kind woman for his loose mouth, but he knows how useless hope is.

She left something on the seat. It's a pamphlet for a battered women's shelter in Crew.

\--HP--

Harry had thought he was jumping on random buses but he is not surprised when he somehow ends up in Crew. His pamphlet is well worn by now. He keeps staring at the women's smiling faces. Their palpable relief is not for the cameras.

The shelter's name is Providence.

They make him sit down almost as soon as he walks in the doors. Gentle hands raise his feet up and ice them. He hadn't noticed how swollen they were. They try to call a doctor for him but he must refuse; the doctor will discern that he is not a girl.

He is unable to explain to them that the ache in his feet is nothing to the ache in his heart.

He stays only one night. They are muggles. They cannot protect him. It's still the best uninterrupted sleep he has had in too long.

In the morning, he asks about other shelters in Crew. He doesn't plan to stay at any of them but if the Order manages to track him here they'll think that is where he went next.

As he's turning away his conscience rebels, there are pregnant women here, and he is no longer naive enough to believe the Order would never harm a pregnant woman for their cause. "There are people after me-"

"Don't worry we won't tell them where you are." Interrupts the lady in white with feather earrings behind the front desk.

'You won't have a choice' he thinks to himself. He grips his useless phoenix and holly wand, but turns around and runs. Again.

\--HP--

He hadn't perceived how much the thought of the shelter was keeping him going nor how much it would drain him to walk away from Providence. He is tired and dizzy all the time now. For the first time in his journey he takes a train. It reminds him of the first time he had gotten on a train at age eleven. Back then he had thought that he was going to a wonderland, now a train was taking him to almost certain death.

When he steps off the train it is raining. It is not an omen, it is not.

He goes into the nearest clothing store and buys a blue cloak for the rain and a new shirt. His old shirt was getting uncomfortably tight. Even with no appetite and on the run he still eats better than he ever did at the Dursleys. The clerk at the counter gives him a funny look. Belatedly he realizes that he had automatically shopped in the men's section. He gives the man an absent smile and leaves quickly.

The rain washes away all traces of his passing.

\--HP--

He chucks his wig at some bushes and walks right through the formidable wards. Harry almost smiles. Doubtless the Order will never understand the opportunity they had lost.  

He follows the pull of his magic throughout the overly decadent manor. Marble, mirror-like wood floors, reflections of crystal chandeliers, Harry drips rainwater onto them all. No one stops him. Between his casual approach and the hood of his blue cloak they probably do not recognize who he is.

He stops outside a set of ornate double doors, raises his hand to knock, and hesitates. He groans. Harry cannot _believe_ himself, the time to turn back had long since passed, but still ...he wants to live. He lets out a slow breath and gently leans his head on the door. 'Half a chance' he thinks, he is exchanging his life and everything he had ever stood for to give someone he will never meet _half_ a chance. He holds onto his queasy stomach. A puddle of muddy water is forming under his feet.

Harry does not knock, he shoves the doors open.

"Hello Tom."


	2. Entangled Webs

Harry dodges within the kaleidoscope of spell-light slicing through the dusk until he reaches an area relatively clear of fighters. "Is anyone here!" he coughs out. The smoke of buildings set aflame was searing his throat and lungs.

Something grabbed his ankle. Harry whirled around to find a man nearly buried under the rubble of his collapsed home. "Help me" he wheezed.

Harry very carefully started vanishing the top portions of the collapsed house and worked his way down. Every second he stood there exposed and occupied felt like an age. He bit his lip, ' _concentrate._ '

A fresh burst of pain flared through his scar. Voldemort.

Harry slowly turned around to meet the murderer's gleaming red eyes. He tightened his grip on his wand and prayed it would hold despite the slippery mix of sweat and ash and entrails on his hands.

"Don't leave me here! PLEASE!"

_"Avada Kadavra!"_

Harry dodged the sickly green light, but the curse was not aimed at him. The trapped man's pleading abruptly cut off.

Voldemort continued his leisurely stroll forwards as if nothing had occurred. "Ah, _much_ better don't you think?"

Harry took in the now sightless eyes and the limp hand still stretched out towards him. "You're a monster." Harry finally managed.

"Weeping for the muggles Harry? You've spent too much time with soft-hearted fools; don't you know they have no magic and no souls?"

Harry quickly lifted his head back up. "You're the only one here who has no soul!"

Voldemort shouted something in response but Harry was momentarily distracted by movement in the corner of his vision. A dueling pair had drifted close. One had a head of long glossy black curls -Bellatrix! His world narrowed with grief and fury. He had a perfect shot of her back. He lined up his wand, 'For Sirius' he thought.

The woman rolled suddenly, and now her opponent's oncoming spell was barreling straight for him. He twirled to the side to avoid the unknown curse, and froze. Voldemort had fired a spell too. Two unknown curses and no place to dodge.

" _Protego_!" Harry shouted, and made the shield as wide as he dared. Both spells sailed right through as if the shield wasn't even there.

Pain had him instantly rolling on the ground, writhing and screaming next to the body of the stranger he had failed to save. He neither noticed nor cared about the broken glass and filth grinding into his skin. All he could think was how sick he was of death and fighting.

-HP-

Harry tore his eyes open. A slightly different shield shimmered in front of his bare palm. His heart was beating a terrified tempo of 'live! live! live!'

It took him a moment to realize that the ground he was lying on was smooth wood whose pristine shine seemed almost mocking after the ruins of Privet Drive. Harry lowered his hand.

Clap… clap… clap. He twisted towards the sound to find Voldemort sitting in a high-backed chair. He stopped his unhurried clapping when Harry looked over, then leaned to one side and rested his chin on his fist as if he were bored, but his malicious gaze was anything but indifferent as he stared down at Harry.

"Impressive" Voldemort said from his throne, voice seething hatred, "but ultimately unnecessary."


	3. Tell Me No Lies

The dark wood floors stretched onwards. Even this close he could not identify what tree they were made from, the otherworldly planks radiating more menace than warmth. Not taking his eyes off Voldemort, Harry slowly sat up. His cloak was stiff as if it had dried muddy while he was wearing it.

Two figures stepped out of the shadow of the Dark Lord’s throne: Lucius Malfoy on the Right, and Snape on the Left.

Voldemort starts twirling a too familiar wand around his fingers. Harry frantically pats himself down, but of course his wand is not there. “An enemy storms into my domain, what can I think but that we are under attack?" Harry's wand spins round and round. He cannot look away. It is all he has left in the world. "The grounds are searched, thoroughly, only to find that we are not, in fact, under attack."

"Next I think sabotage," The wand abruptly stops spinning.  "but the reports I get back become more and more baffling." Voldemort does not sound confused. He sounds more and more angry. "You tampered with nothing, you accosted no one." He tosses it into the air and snatches it. "It finally occurs to me that this is all some clever distraction. So I send my spy out," Harry starts and looks at Snape. Did he tell them? Is the Order mounting a 'rescue' as they speak?

"Imagine my surprise when he tells me that not only is there _no_ plot, the impotent fools have no idea where you are." Harry lets out a breath.

"So tell me" Voldemort leans forward, spindly fingers grasping the arms of his throne, wand straining under a white knuckled grip."Why did you come here? But more importantly WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY WARDS!"

Harry tried in vain to wet his dry mouth. “I’m here because I need protection from the Order. I’m willing trade. I have information, not the least of which is the full prophesy.”

Voldemort was silent.

“And what reason has you, Dumbledore’s pet mongrel, escaping your leash?” Lucius at least sounded intrigued, Harry hoped that was a good sign.

“My reasons are my own.”

“You stupid child! You utter imbecile! Do you think that this a game?” Snape burst out.

“Shut up Snape!” Hate: old, familiar, grounding. It buoyed him up in a world gone wrong. He focused his gaze on Snape. “The _Order_ turned against me, they shot spells at me day and night. They locked me up, they took my wand over this, and I had trusted them a whole lot more than I have ever trusted _you_.” Harry rubbed his face. That had been more than he’d meant to tell them. That had been more than he’d meant to tell anyone. Somewhere inside him there was a little boy who would always be ashamed when the people who were supposed to care for him, didn’t. When he looked back up, Lucius was giving Snape a Look.

Lucius rolled his eyes, “Surely even you can see our dilemma, if your little secrets –”

“I'm willing to offer my own oath." Harry looks Voldemort in his crimson eyes "That I will not knowingly cause harm to you and yours except in self-defense. I want out of this war, I'm done."

"What a disgustingly high opinion of your own worth you have Potter." Snape again.

Voldemort simply watches, waiting. Unexpectedly, the whole thing seemed a bit staged: Lucius, the blonde voice of reason, and Snape, dark and untamed.

Voldemort finally speaks. “The wards.”

"What about them?"

“You have somehow accomplished the nigh unheard-of deed of tampering with blood wards, MY blood wards."

“I just walked in. I assumed it was because of what happened in your father's graveyard.” Unspoken was the blasphemous thought _we share blood now._

“Hogwarts under that bumbling idiot is not what it used to be" Lucius continues in an amused tone Harry no longer trusts. "You do not share blood with the Dark Lord, and even if you did, do you think that every cousin or two-bit relation can wrestle control of a manor’s wards from its master?”

"I didn't do anything like that! All I did was walk in!"

"Show him"

"My Lord?"

" _Show Him!"_

-HP-

Harry hesitated before entering the memory, white wisps dancing just beneath his fingertips. He looked at the three looming figures in front of him searchingly,

Snape spoke up. His silken voice had an undercurrent of danger. "An odd moment to gain a modicum of self-preservation Potter, considering you've been unconscious for three days in the center of our Lord's audience chamber." Harry had thought he'd seen all of Snape's rages, but this icy fury was different. He was now hit with complete conviction that Snape had killed before, and that _this_ was the last face his victims had seen before death. Harry involuntarily jerked- his fingers brushed something cold, and the pensieve pulled him lovingly down into its depths.


	4. Memory in a Bottle

When the white mists cleared, Harry was standing next to memory-Lucius on the opposite side of the room he was just in. Lucius, Snape, and two men he only recognizes from a wanted photo: the Lestrange brothers, were clustered around a small table that had probably been intended for a scribe. Even though he was standing right next to them, Harry couldn't hear a word that was spoken, and the papers strewn on the table were blank. Harry blinked, he supposed Lucius must be an occulmens too.

Harry drifted away from the silent discussion and suddenly curious, looked around. He had been in this room three times already, yet this was his first chance to take it all in.

The room was long. There was a fire blazing in a blackened hearth along one wall where Nagini rested, and elaborate sconces seemingly writhing in the flickering light along the other. A narrow green and silver carpet spanned from the huge doors to the foot of Voldemort's seat.

Harry had never wondered what Voldemort was like off the battlefield, but if pressed he probably would have said that he acted every inch the aristocratic pureblood at all times. Harry couldn’t have said why, especially considering Tom Riddle had been raised in a muggle orphanage. 

Voldemort was lounging across his throne, one leg draped over a chair-arm, staring up at the ceiling, frowning. His casually held wand was tapping an almost hypnotic rhythm that ensured no one present forgot his threat. It was a pose at once terror inducing and disarmingly unguarded.

The two massive double doors across the chamber burst open, and with a heavy **Boom!** banged against the walls behind them.

In enters a person who cannot possibly be him, that person is all confidence and stormy rage. All Harry remembers feeling then, is fear.

One of the Lestrange brothers recovers from their surprise, and fires _"Incarcerus!"_ Harry draws his own wand, and collapses like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Harry's jaw drops; he fainted. In front of God, Voldemort, and Snape, _He fainted._

Luckily for Harry, the deatheater’s spell never reached him. Halfway to where he laid completely defenseless, the spell ricochets off a deep red, almost black, barrier, back onto the caster, only the spell's effect was multiplied. Instead of binding ropes, Lestrange was wrapped in a fine wire that was only visible when it caught the light just right.

The man gulps, and a line of red appears around his throat.

Voldemort vanishes the lethal wire with a negligent wave of his hand. "Search the grounds, He cannot be alone!"

Snape and Lucius rush to carry out the order. The remaining Lestrange brother hurries to the sibling who is holding a hand to his wet throat, rivulets of blood staining his tunic. "Rodolphus let me see" he murmurs.

Louder, the man who must be Rabastan says, "May I ask why it is that you set the wards against my brother? The spell was nonlethal. We know that he is yours to kill."

"It was not I, the wards acted on their own."

"My Lord?" Snape had come back unnoticed into the room. He was bent, on his knees, palms skyward, his expression obscured by a curtain of black hair. "Should something be done about the intruder?"

Voldemort's expression turned distant, as if he was remembering something long ago. "Are you going to beg me for his life?"

"No my Lord, I hate the Potter brat, I ask only to serve you."

"Leave him then, it looks to be a case of extreme magical exhaustion. He won't be waking up anytime soon."

Harry is starting to wonder how long this memory goes when Voldemort sits back in his throne with the regal airs Harry had first expected. "Shall I test my mastery of the Wards? Snape, fetch me Pettigrew."

When Harry lays eyes on the cowering excuse of a man, he briefly forgets that this is just a memory, and lunges for his parent's betrayer, but the memory abruptly ends, and he is being pulled up and away.

"Wormtail" says a voice filled with malicious glee, "Curse me."

Screams are the last thing Harry hears before the mists swallow him whole.


	5. Lost Voices

"So, do you still claim you have done nothing to the wards? What reason would you arrive before me magically exhausted, if not because you were playing with forbidden magics?"

Harry lifted his chin and straightened his stance. He would not repeat himself. He had learned over the years that people will only hear the truth if they want to. They will not listen to pleas; they do not care if you cry. Harry clenched his right fist, and stark were the words for any who would care to see: _‘I must not tell lies.’_

"Do you think that you can bargain with me?" Voldemort's sudden cruel and malevolent laughter sent chills down Harry's spine. "Do you think that you're safe? Normally I would just tear all of your pitiful secrets from your mind, but there are other ways. Oh yes. I know that you've left your merry little band of blood-traitors, but can you sit there and watch them be tortured?

_"Yes"_ Harry said with relish.

"All of them? Even your pet mudblood?"

Lucius reached behind the now empty throne and yanked out Hermione, bound and gagged, wrists trickling blood where she had struggled against the ropes, her normally wild bushy hair laying limp around her tear streaked face.

"Hermione!" Harry ran forwards and grabbed her arm to pull her behind him- but as soon as he touched her, she blew away like so much smoke. She had only been an illusion.

"So," Voldemort says, his voice oozing smug satisfaction, "here's _my_ bargain: Tell me what you did to the wards, and any other information I deem useful, and maybe, I won't watch you _starve_."

Harry realized then, that he had voluntarily placed himself under siege. He could not even warn Hermione that she was in danger. The instant he stepped away from the protection of the wards, he was dead.

Harry closed his eyes and tried to swallow back the vile taste of self-disgust.

-HP-

"Hey Harry, you wanted to see to me?" The door snaps shut behind her with a pronounced _click_.

"Yeah." Harry stops pacing briefly to give Hermione a small smile. He'd already worn a path through the thick dust on the decrepit floors of Grimmauld Place. The dust was everywhere, on the bed, drifting in the air, and falling into their hair and making them appear old before their time. "I'm surprised they let you in here."

"I told them that I'll try to make you see reason." She lets out a small huff of laughter, "little do they know that I've never been able to convince you of anything once you've dug in your heels."

"That's just it 'Mione, I'm not sure."

"You're not?" She tried to catch his eye but he's too busy pacing to look at her. "You seemed pretty decided to me."

"That's because they're not giving me a choice! They have no right! It's my life! Mine! All I want is a minute to think. ...You like to think Hermione. "

"Yes Harry, I like to think" she says in a flat voice.

He turns and looks back at her. "I didn't mean anything by it 'Mione."

"I know Harry." She grabs him by the shoulders and makes sure he's looking into her brown eyes. "You know that you're smart too, right?"

"I know, I mean- " Harry lets out a long breath. "When I was a little kid, I used to lay awake at night and wonder why the Dursleys hated me, if there was something that I could do to make them like me, or what it would be like if my parents weren't dead, you know, little kid thoughts.

"It took me a while to realize that thinking always made things worse. So... I stopped.

"Your family hates you? Just go to sleep.

"Your own cousin wants to hurt you? Just run. It was simple: one foot in front of the other.

"By the time I got my Hogwarts letter, I was used to not thinking. I wasn't thinking 'this is big'. That magic changes things, and that it could change things that I _liked_." Softly, barely a whisper, he said, "I didn't realize that magic could change _me_. I couldn't even see that it already had." In a stronger voice, he says "But I know that you think Hermione, so I want to know, when you got your letter, were you scared?"

"No Harry, I wasn't scared."

"Looking back, I feel like I should've been scared."

"Because you're scared now?"

Harry didn't answer, so Hermione gently took one of his hands, and held on until it had stopped shaking.

-HP-

Harry holds his eyes closed for just a moment more, and imagines he can still feel her hands trying and failing to hold him together while the world ripped him in two.

Then Harry opened his brilliant green eyes, and there was murder in his gaze.

_...You know Harry...._ The memory of Hermione continued to echo in his thoughts, but Harry was no longer listening.

"You know Tom" Harry said aloud, and with a thought, viciously summoned his holly wand from out of Voldemort's grasp.

_...this doesn't have to change you..._

“If you think that I am _less_ dangerous now, than you’re a fool.” Because nothing is more dangerous than a person with nothing left to lose.

Harry hissed sss" **NOW!** "sss in parseltongue, and the command echoed ominously throughout the chamber before a flood of snakes slithered in from every crack and crevasse in the walls, under the doors, even seeping from the ceiling, they came. Every snake he could reach on his four-day journey, and every snake that they could reach, and so on. From every direction, they came and quickly wrapped around Snape and Lucius until they looked like overburdened trees, the snakes hanging from their arms like misshapen fruit, fangs bared and dripping venom millimeters from their skin. Some tried to attack Voldemort too, but were rebuffed by the wards.

"There's a snake on every one of your followers in the manor. You can't hurt me, I can't hurt you, but we can _both_ take hostages. So are you ready to try my bargain again, or do you think you can wage a war with no army?"

Voldemort glared at Harry, weighing him, calculating.

"I Lord Volde --"

"Ah, Ah, Ah,” Harry grinned, and the smile was dark and full of terrors. “I might be a muggle raised idiot, but even I know that you have to use your true name to make it binding. And since you mentioned it, I want to add Hermione and one other, just in case, to the protection."

Voldemort paused for an even longer time, the thick tension building with every silent second.

"I, Tom Marvolo Riddle," he bared his unnaturally sharp, shark-like teeth "swear on my magic, from this day forth, to cause no intentional harm to Harry James Potter, the mudblood Hermione Granger, and one other to be specified later, So mote it be."

"So mote it be."

_...to me you will always be the noble, selfless boy who risked his life to save a near stranger from a troll._


End file.
